Rapist-killer escapes death: is the judiciary inconsistent?

The accused man killed an elderly woman, chopping off her fingers, and then raped her pregnant grand daughter-in-law, stabbing her 19 times. Yet the Supreme Court commuted his sentence, saying he was drunk and therefore not in a normal state of mind. This is three days after a Thiruvananthapuram court sentenced an auto-rickshaw driver to death for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl alone at home.